Each year since 2006, following on from an earlier pilot project, six composers have been chosen from a long list of applicants—often more than 200—to the LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme. Their task is to write an orchestral piece of approximately three minutes’ duration to be workshopped by the LSO in a dedicated session. Throughout the year they are mentored by Christian Mason and myself, and have contact with the Orchestra and with individual players, as well as being invited to attend both rehearsals and concerts. A real relationship develops, which always continues beyond the Scheme itself, so that we feel that an extensive ‘Panufnik family’ has been established.

With the exceptionally generous backing of The Helen Hamlyn Trust and the patronage of Camilla Panufnik, whose active participation has been an essential part and after whose husband (the composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik) the project is named, the Scheme has grown ever stronger as it has developed. Nearly 120 composers have had the exceptional opportunity of working with one of the world’s great orchestras over the past 20 years: an achievement for the LSO to be very proud of, and one that sets a remarkable example for others to follow.

This fourth recording of music by composers who have taken part in the Scheme includes works written for the annual composers’ workshops over the past several years, as well as a number of pieces from the earlier years of the Scheme, thus achieving a wide stylistic and chronological perspective. In addition, we have continued to include the pieces subsequently commissioned by the LSO from Panufnik composers to be part of the Orchestra’s main season (now a regular part of the scheme). The result is a tribute both to the composers involved and to the remarkable faith that the LSO has shown in the Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme over the years.
© 2025, Colin Matthews OBE

The LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme
The LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme offers six emerging composers each year the opportunity to write for a world-class symphony orchestra. The Scheme is guided by renowned composer Colin Matthews, with support from Christian Mason. Together with additional tailored support, the Scheme enables composers to experiment with and develop their orchestral writing skills through creating a three-minute composition over twelve months. The resulting compositions are performed by the LSO, and discussed in a public workshop at the culmination of the Scheme. Two of the compositions are then chosen to be developed further, with commissions given for five- and ten-minute works to be premiered by the Orchestra in an LSO concert at the Barbican. The LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme was devised by the Orchestra in association with Lady Panufnik, in memory of her late husband, the composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik, and is generously supported by Lady Hamlyn CBE and The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

2025 Amy Crankshaw, Elif Nur Karlıdağ, Zhenyan Li, Kit McCarthy, Marcello Palazzo, Miles Walter
2024 Laila Arafah, Monika Dalach Sayers, Margarida Gonçalves, Emily Hazrati, Yunho Jeong, Whan Ri-Ahn
2023 Isabella Gellis, Geoffrey King, Omri Kochavi~, Eden Lonsdale, Marcus Rock, Sasha Scott*
2022 Lara Agar~, Robert Crehan, Litha Efthymiou, Robin Haigh, Edwin Hillier, Rafael Marino Arcaro*
2020 Stef Conner~, Christian Drew*, Patrick John Jones, Emma-Kate Matthews, Chris McCormack, Alex Paxton
2019 Joe Bates, Caroline Bordignon, James Chan, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Louise Drewett*, Jonathan Woolgar~
2018 Joel Järventausta*, Cassie Kinoshi^, Lara Poe, Ido Romano, George Stevenson~, Alex Tay
2017 James Hoyle~, Grace-Evangeline Mason^, Sophya Polevaya*, Emma Wilde, Alexander Woolf, Han Xu
2016 Benjamin Ashby, Amy Bryce^, Gonçalo Gato, Daniel Kidane^, Liam Mattison~, Donghoon Shin*
2015 Ewan Campbell*, Daniel Fardon, Patrick Giguère~, Daniel Moreira, Bethan Morgan-Williams^, Deborah Pritchard^
2014 Michael Cryne, Michael Cutting, Vitalija Glovackytė, Alex Roth^, Jack Sheen*, Michael Taplin~
2013 Kim B Ashton, Benjamin Graves, Jae-Moon Lee, James Moriarty~, Elizabeth Ogonek*, Richard Whalley
2012 Patrick Brennan~, Leo Chadburn, David Coonan, Bushra El-Turk^, Ryan Latimer, Aaron Parker*
2011 Matthew Kaner*, Michael Langemann, Joanna Lee^, Alastair Putt~, Duncan Ward, Mihyun Woo
2010 Eloise Nancie Gynn~^, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, Christopher Mayo, Edward Nesbit*, Dan Stern, Elizabeth Winters~
2009 Edmund Finnis, Francisco Coll Garcia~, Fung Lam, Vlad Maistorovici*, Max de Wardener^, Toby Young
2008 Andrew McCormack*, Joshua Penduck, Matthew Sergeant, Sasha Siem+, Ayanna Witter-Johnson^, Raymond Yiu^
2007 Elspeth Brooke, Emily Howard+^, Tom Lane, Charlie Piper*, Evis Sammoutis, Anjula Semmens
2006 Larry Goves, Emily Hall+, Christian Mason+^, Matthew Rogers, Martin Suckling+, Jason Yarde*+
2005 (pilot) Daniel Basford, John Douglas Templeton, Philip Venables

KEY
* Panufnik 10-minute commission
~ Panufnik 5-minute commission
+ UBS Soundscapes: Pioneers Commission
^ LSO Artist Commission (commissioned to write a piece for a visiting artist or artists for performance in LSO concerts at the Barbican or LSO St Luke’s)

Ryan Latimer Rhapsody
Rhapsody is a compact orchestral miniature that threads together lively, restless, and freewheeling episodes into a brisk three-minute form. It’s fast-paced and unpredictable, shifting quickly between moments that flit and flurry, or that lilt with gentle ease, or erupt with frenzied rhythmic drive. Ideas collide and slingshot each other forward, only to be sideswiped by unexpected intrusions before barely touching the ground, in true rhapsodic form—mercurial, spontaneous, and over before you know it.

Ryan Latimer’s music has been described as ‘anarchic and cartoonishly fun’ (BBC Radio 3) and ‘deliciously playful’ (Classical Music magazine). He was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in 2024 for Pound of Cure, commissioned by Britten Sinfonia. In 2021, his debut album was released on NMC Recordings, featuring performances by BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra and London Sinfonietta. ‘Allusive, sparkling, and emphatically rhythmic’ (The Guardian), it reached #2 in the UK Official Charts and received 5-stars from BBC Music Magazine. He is a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation ‘Award for Artists’ and is supported by the PRS Foundation. His music has featured at international festivals, including Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//), Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Druskomanija, and the Aldeburgh Festival.

James Albany Hoyle Thymiaterion
Taking its name from an ancient Greek incense burner, Thymiaterion alludes to the image of variously shaped plumes of scented smoke drifting in different directions at multiple speeds, as a metaphor for the complex resonances produced by swinging bells. These resonances—cultural as well as sonic—give rise to the music’s character and narrative, as the music juxtaposes the various associations that bell ringing, in all its many forms, can give rise to. The music alludes to several traditions of bell ringing as it progresses, with the combination of their different characters and effects all contributing to the music’s trajectory.

James Albany Hoyle’s music embraces an eclectic range of influences, including ‘classics’ of the repertoire as well as more recent approaches. He is particularly interested in Bach, Sibelius, Nielsen, and Gérard Grisey, amongst many others, and explores new ways of incorporating such influences into his music through composition. His music aims to combine a kaleidoscopic and pluralistic array of different musical styles and compositional approaches, forming unlikely unions between all of them by way of structural logic and narrative. His piece Thymiaterion formed part of his doctorate in composition, which investigated musical time and temporality under the supervision of Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

George Stevenson Vanishing city
Vanishing city is dedicated to the climbers of Leningrad, who scaled and camouflaged the city’s prominent buildings and monuments during the siege of 1941-1944, preventing their use as reference points by German bombers. In the midst of this unthinkably fraught and dangerous work, they described moments of surreal calm as they looked out, high above Leningrad, watching as their city seemed to be fading away. The piece was premiered at the Barbican under Ryan Wigglesworth, with a further performance conducted by Gianandrea Noseda.

George Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1987 and grew up performing as a jazz pianist around Scotland. After a Masters in Physics from Imperial College London, he completed postgraduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, followed by the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, spending several years working with Boston Consulting Group. George’s music is just as likely to take inspiration from his background in science (Trees made of air, 2019, and Algol, 2018) as it is to draw from strange, imagined worlds (Les machines de l’Île, 2017) or the folksong of Southern Russia (Stavropol, 2016).

Most recently, George was featured on a new album of music commissioned by Psappha, a contemporary music ensemble from the North West of England. Forthcoming projects include two new works for Britten Sinfonia.

James Chan Tanztheater
Tanztheater takes its inspiration from two sources: Pina Bausch’s 1975 choreography for The Rite of Spring, and Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of the film Suspiria. The piece takes as its starting point the immense physicality of dance; in Bausch’s choreography, the sound of the dancers’ breathing can be heard when the music stops. From Guadagnino’s film, the piece draws on the themes of magic and transformation. The piece inhabits a dreamlike landscape where material transforms, collides, and recurs. Slow amorphous music turns into a breathless, frantic dance.

James Chan is a Hong Kong-born composer based in London. His music inhabits a delicate and fragile sound world, and draws inspiration from other art forms, from film to sculpture. James graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2022, where he studied with Edmund Finnis and David Sawer. He previously studied on the joint-course at the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music, where he was tutored by Gary Carpenter.

Musicians and groups that he has worked with include Tabea Debus, the National Youth Choir, Psappha ensemble, and Riot Ensemble.

Daniel Kidane Titan
Taut, rhythmic and meticulously constructed, Kidane’s music has a distinctive voice and Titan is no exception. Named after the primordial deities of ancient Greek mythology, Titan sets out to invoke ‘the strength and gigantism of these divine beings … creating a shamanic sound world, upon which the orchestra becomes the Titan’. From the opening fortissimo chord we are in ferocious, muscular territory, launching headfirst into a driving rhythmic motif carried by the horn and violins. This ‘heavy’ thematic idea was first inspired by David Alberman’s (former LSO Principal Second Violin) rendition of a string passage that Kidane initially composed for string quartet. In its new orchestral incarnation, bolstered here by heavy percussion and punctuating fortissimo chords, it takes on a primal and ritualistic character, pulling us irresistibly onwards.

While the ferocity of the opening eventually dwindles as we enter the more kaleidoscopic central section, Kidane’s score loses none of its drive. Here, melodic fragments are tossed across the orchestra, their thematic shards glinting in the light, the dynamics pared back to allow more detailed, closer inspection. And while a more lyrical countermelody sweeps through the strings, harp and piano, the opening theme remains a persistent and oppressive presence, eventually regaining its strength to drive the work towards a powerful and abrupt end.
Programme note © Jo Kirkbride

Daniel Kidane’s music has been performed extensively across the UK and abroad. Notable UK premieres include Awake by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Last Night of the Proms; Zulu by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; and the grime-inspired Breakbeat, by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Internationally, his music has been premiered by the San Francisco Symphony, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and the Orchestre de chambre de Paris.

A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, he is Visiting Tutor in Composition at the RNCM and Cambridge University. Awarded a Royal Philharmonic Society Prize in 2013 and the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists in 2016, recent highlights include the premieres of his violin concerto with Julia Fischer and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sun Poem with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Amy Bryce Affection (and shining sounds)
I have named this piece Affection (and shining sounds) as a nod to the poet Arthur Rimbaud’s Départ (Departure), where the last line is ‘Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs !’ (Departure in new affection and new noise!). I was really taken with Rimbaud’s poetry, particularly during the year I wrote this piece and was really thinking about my music in terms of surrealism. I loved the way Rimbaud would throw pieces of imagery next to each other because they made evocative sense, rather than logical sense. Whether a similar process is evident in this piece remains to be seen, but I do think that the beginning sounds like affection and that the end has some shining sounds.

Described as ‘a very exciting young British composer’ by BBC Radio 3, Amy Bryce’s deliberately playful scores produce music that is strikingly visual or theatrical. Firmly establishing herself across genres, her music spans classical concert repertoire, experimental music theatre, and bold works for educational settings. Notable commissions include BBC Radio 3, Britten Pears Arts, the London Symphony Orchestra, London Youth Choirs, The Marian Consort, National Youth Choir, and the Stiftung Kunst und Musik für Dresden. As a queer artist, she approaches the industry through a lens of rejection and reclaiming, offering instead a sense of playfulness and wit.

Joel Järventausta Suns extinguished
A cycle of four diatonic chords governs the structure of Suns extinguished. The chords create a chorale in the background whilst more fleeting melodic and gestural material is brought to the forefront. The diatonicism evokes a harmonic familiarity yet the music is coloured with microtones to alienate the sound world ever so slightly. The piece starts with the quiet humming of double bass harmonics. The orchestra joins, breathing colour into the texture as melodic fragments appear against the pulsation of the horns. The brass and lower woodwinds move towards a darker register, allowing brief melodic outbursts to appear on the high strings, whilst tolling bells accompany.

Spending his childhood in Luxembourg and Germany, Finnish composer Joel Järventausta (b1995) completed his studies in the UK, and was awarded a PhD in Composition from King’s College London, where he studied with Sir George Benjamin and Professor Silvina Milstein. Now based back in Finland, Joel is currently working as a freelance composer. His work has been commissioned and performed by orchestras and ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, Aarhus Symfoniorkester, Jyväskylä Sinfonia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Chamber Choir and Uusinta Ensemble.

Dan Stern Away from the edge
Fifteen years ago, when I wrote Away from the edge (‘AFTE’), it was my intention to capture the improvisational thought of a jazz musician on paper. Following on from my saxophone heroes John Coltrane, Michael Brecker, and Dave Liebman, I wanted to throw out a couple of tiny phrases—including mi, re, do—and then riff on them with an orchestra. Hearing it in the recording session many years later, I came away with a new point of view: the LSO + AFTE does not equal one short piece. It is 80-plus musicians vibrating together, pushing out grooves.

Dan Stern is an innovative exploratory artist whose work spans improvisation, composition, installation, and spatialised music. Drawing deeply from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, his practice focuses on polyphony and the dynamic interplay of sound, space, and time. By fusing diverse musical traditions with intellectual frameworks, Stern invites a fresh perspective on sonic experience. As a tenor saxophonist, he has worked with many major jazz musicians, including Dave Liebman, Dave Binney, Tim Garland, Andy Sheppard, Gwilym Simcock, Robert Mitchell, and Asaf Sirkis, along with classical and experimental artists. Stern’s work pushes artistic boundaries, exploring the intersections of musical structure, philosophy, and auditory perception to craft immersive, thought-provoking environments.

Jack Sheen Lung
Almost everything that happens in Jack Sheen’s piece is there in its first few bars. Rather like an Alexander Calder mobile, in which there is no foreground or background, and in which every element is equal to every other, Lung has been written without narrative or dramatic incident, in the usual sense of the terms, but as an object to be slowly considered from every angle. But this is not to say that everything that happens can be heard in those first few bars. Sheen’s piece may be flat in one sense, but—again like Calder’s mobiles—it also has great depth of field, with layers of music rolling over each other to bring different elements in and out of view.
Programme note © Tim Rutherford-Johnson

Jack Sheen is a conductor and composer from Manchester, England, whose music spans orchestral and chamber works to performance and sound installations. As a composer, Jack has been commissioned by orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Symphony and Scottish Symphony Orchestras, Aurora Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and Manchester Camerata; ensembles including ensemble mosaik, London Sinfonietta, Apartment House, EXAUDI, and Les Métaboles; and organisations such as Wigmore Hall, La Biennale di Venezia, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Casa de Serralves (Porto), the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Camden Art Centre.

Daniel Fardon Flux
Flux /fluks/ noun
1 continuous change: ‘urban life is in a constant state of flux’.
2 (technical) the action of flowing.
– origin: Latin fluxus (‘fluxus’ – adj., from Latin ‘fluere’, meaning ‘to flow’).
[Oxford English Dictionary]

Daniel Fardon (b1991) is a British composer based in London. His work has received various awards including an Ivor Novello Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize. His music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and commissioned and/or performed by internationally acclaimed ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), Britten Sinfonia, the Schubert Ensemble, the Carducci String Quartet, and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, in venues including London’s Wigmore Hall and Birmingham’s CBSO Centre. Daniel teaches composition at The Purcell School for Young Musicians, and is currently Artistic Director of Hackney Music Live.

Grace-Evangeline Mason Beneath the silken silence
Beneath the silken silence is an orchestral work based on the poem, The Faery Forest by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933). The piece is inspired by both the imagery and phrase structure within the prose and acts as an unspoken vocalisation of the poem. The work seeks to create an atmospheric sound-world to reflect the dreamlike movements of nature portrayed in the poem: it begins with ethereal airs above an impending darkness that rumbles beneath the surface, and ends with spangled, iridescent textures as ‘the faery forest glimmered’ above ‘a faery tune’.

Named as the ‘Face to Watch’ for classical music in The Times’ 2020 Calendar of the Arts, composer Grace-Evangeline Mason has worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra amongst others, in venues across the UK and internationally, including European countries, the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and South Africa. Her work The imagined forest, ‘drawn with pen-and-ink precision’ (The Times), was premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2021 BBC Proms, marking 150 years of the Royal Albert Hall. This was followed by Ablaze the momon at the 2023 Proms performed by the BBC Philharmonic. Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Joe Bates Muted the night
I took Muted the night’s title from Wallace Stevens’ poem, Peter Quince at the Clavier, a print of which hangs above my piano. The poem is full of orchestral noise—‘blaring horns’, ‘pizzicati of Hosanna’—but what struck me was his insistence that:

Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.

I sketched out the piece with a retuned autoharp and finished orchestrating it in opiate-induced numbness after a terrible accident, lying in bed in my parents’ house, a dislocation I still hear in the blank ending and the fidgeting timpani.

To writer Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Joe Bates’s music evokes ‘the court music of a short-lived empire’, finding ceremony in looping phrases and novel tuning systems, where strange chords sound like home. He works with choirs, orchestras, and chamber musicians, and builds new instruments from glass vessels, broken pianos, and circuit boards. He performs as an electronic musician, both as a soloist and alongside ensembles, and directed Filthy Lucre, a music night that programmed intense, absorbing music across genres. His music appears on releases from October House Records, and with the National Youth Choir, Terra Invisus, and SANSARA.

Benjamin Graves Home(un)spun
Home(un)spun reflects on comfort and familiarity. It maps the course of a ceilidh, an evening in which close friends and family unite and dance together late into the night. After a short introduction referencing the ‘Dawn Interlude’ from Peter Grimes (an evocation of homeliness and simplicity), the first section recalls a strathspey, a slow and stately dance, quoting the tune Morrison’s Jig and interjected with short jigs and reels. The ceilidh gets into full swing in the second part, with raucous jigs taking over, and a final extended coda reflects on the evening’s entertainment.

Benjamin has won numerous awards and bursaries, and his compositions have been heard across the world. Notable venues include: Birmingham Town and Symphony Halls, and London’s Barbican and Southbank Centres, Smith Square Hall, and Wigmore Hall. Notable ensemble performances of Benjamin’s work include those by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Ensemble Recherche, Riot Ensemble, The Hermes Experiment, and members of the BBC and London Symphony Orchestras. Orchestral works of his have been performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (premiered in January 2023 and released on NMC Recordings), London Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. His Corale for viola and piano was nominated for an Ivors Composer Award.

Cassie Kinoshi If she could dance naked under palm trees
Cassie Kinoshi’s If she could dance naked under palm trees is inspired by the lyrics from Nina Simone’s song Images. The song itself is a setting of a 1926 poem No Images by the Harlem Renaissance poet William Waring Cuney that portrays a black woman’s internalisation of European standards of beauty and hence her rejection of her own body. Simone returned to the song many times throughout her long career, but one of its first performances is also its best known—a raw a cappella that grows primordially from private chant into devastating lament, given at the famous 1964 Carnegie Hall concerts that established her as a figurehead in the Civil Rights Movement.

More broadly speaking, the poem No Images is about the difficult path towards self-worth, what Kinoshi refers to as ‘the arduous yet fulfilling journey often required for one to understand and know their value’.

In response, If she could dance naked falls into two parts. The first is dreamlike, scattered. Perhaps a musical connection to Simone’s performance can be heard here in the tentative creation of self through pentatonic fragments that slowly coalesce into larger, more certain forms. The second half is more stridently self-assured, perhaps even a vindication, as those searching melodies lock into a driving four-note motif (the section marked ‘Frantic, bursting’) that strides out from the strings in the face of all distractions, eventually capturing the whole orchestra under its sway.
Programme note © Tim Rutherford-Johnson

Cassie Kinoshi is a Mercury Prize-nominated (2019) and Ivors Academy Award-winning (2018) Berlin/London-based composer, arranger, and alto-saxophonist focused on multi-disciplinary, genre-blending performance. She leads the ten-piece ensemble seed. (formerly SEED Ensemble), featuring top London improvisers. A Trinity Laban graduate, she studied with Andrew Poppy and Stephen Montague.

Her 2023 commission Gratitude premiered at the Southbank Centre and was released in 2024 by Chicago label International Anthem. Cassie is also very passionate about working as an educator and workshop leader with outreach being an integral part of her performance work. In 2020 and 2021, she arranged and conducted a community ensemble for EFG London Jazz Festival’s ‘She is Jazz: Womxn Make Music’ performance at the Southbank Centre and Kings Place.

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